Mark Vernon ‘An Annotated Phonography Of Chance’ 12” (Misanthropic Agenda)

Last year saw the release by Misanthropic Agenda of a deluxe double LP reissue of Joe Colley’s intense ‘Psychic Stress Soundtracks’, an exploration of unpredictable sound with strong references to film both in the broader sensory media and the cellulose nitrate itself. Now visiting ‘An Annotated Phonography Of Chance’ by Scottish experimentalist Mark Vernon which preceded the Colley release by a matter of months, I hear an even greater interest in cinema – reflected in the foley-like closeness of its environmental sounds, a deeper soundtrack sensibility to grander gestures, and the literal unspooling of reels which ticks through the first side to further fragment its diverse audio components, also returning to close the LP as the final frames fall to the floor.

Across the first side individual tracks quickly get lost amid the ebb and flow of Mark’s work, minutiae of acoustic home recordings – water,  chatter, travel, birds – melting into horrifyingly elongated brass instrument vibrations, chilling ambient soundscapes, choral and piano samples, and a haze of obscure manipulations and peripheral sonic crumbs which further fragment any attempt to embrace a defining sensibility from ‘An Annotated Phonography Of Chance’. It’s an intentional march of distraction, a sequence of left-hand turns where elements are refined within their allocated time and realised with care in production, timing and nuance – but which bewilder within the larger whole as the provoked visualisations scatter across the colour wheel.

Of particular note are the visually provocative moments which delve into almost Goblin-like throb and threat during what I think is “The Consensus Is To Delete” – albeit without the heavy instrumentation – and the intertwined ghostly invocations which unravel from backwards-treated stretches of damp ambience thereafter (“Nossos Ossos”), bold strokes of sound with a familiarly visual edge to it then reduced back to a darker – but equally evocative – scene.

Even if the inputs remain diffuse, the second side of the LP builds a more focused and singular mood, combining windswept electronics, barking dogs, twitching noise vibrations, slow tonal manipulations and sickly wet vivisection into an extended play of shadowy slow-motion dark ambient.  But even after the barrage of sound components which cross the first side, the second still pulls some surprises across its twenty minutes. The creaks and dying haunted house effect reel of “Megalithic Circuit” are especially profound, chewed cassette playback turned into pensive ambient dread as buzzing flies, behind-the-door gesture and resonant low-end surround the listener in a worryingly visceral experience; closer “Simmer Dim”’s focus on vocal utterances – singing, speech and whistling – also shines as a refined close to such a wayward LP.

Misanthropic Agenda has always looked outside noise/industrial confines for its releases, but the last few years have cast that net wider, and Mark Vernon is one of the catches.  The label seems intent on finding unique voices within the broader experimental music lexicon, and ‘An Annotated Phonography of Chance’ gives significant space to one of those. I grew up mining musical interests across genres and sub-genres while still firmly rooted in music’s darker expressions. Vernon’s keenness for experimentation but acknowledgement of mood reflect both those familiarities, even if his expression is a march from mine.

https://misanthropicagenda.bandcamp.com/album/an-annotated-phonography-of-chance

Death Dedication & Necroecclesia ‘Experiment To Destruct’ CDR (Head Tapes)

‘Experiment to Destruct’ looks, feels and sounds like a release I haven’t picked up in a long time: two acts of raw harsh noise ripped to a CDR with a pasted-on label, and with a foldover cover in a thin plastic sleeve: the type of release I received a glut of in the ‘00s, at the peak of the use of CDR as a cheap and efficient choice of underground sound dissemination – but one which has neared extinction in the face of the resurrection of cassette as the chosen base media. The disc is welcomingly crude and unapologetically abrasive, both performances seemingly one-take expressions of late night urge and frustration, a small bank of effects hammered and thrashed into submission.

Immediately noticeable about the Death Dedication tracks is their emphasis on low-end murk, a heavy bass frequency dousing proceedings at the expense of a more balanced production, I suspect the result also of the initial recordings being on analogue tape (given the thin layer of tape hiss mist which hangs above the piece), and giving both the project’s tracks an immediately sinister shadow under which to work.

Both opener “Twisted Limbs Washed” and second track “Do You Still Party” cover a fair expanse of sound, from sore blistered bubbles to soaked throes of distortion, and incorporating humming synth flights, boiling semi-ambient baths, and kitchen cupboard clatter. “Twisted Limbs Washed” is especially prone to being in constant transit, demure lines quickly running into thickly laid slabs, and with a mixture of monophonic and polyphonic tranches both when in full-on distortion mode and when exploring less torching tones. “Do You Still Party” is the more stable of the two, opting overwhelmingly for familiarly cascading bass-heavy distortions, but still falling into a backwater of idling softer noise a few minutes in, and slowing to glimpse a surprising skeleton of junk metal clamour at about the ten minute mark – which then permeates the track as its distortions return to again submerge the source material in viscous tarry noise.

Necroecclesia fires up a single track with an instantly brighter mid-range responsiveness and hint of high-end crispness added to its low-end furnacing, the piece largely immobile in its focus on a tearing central frequency and slowly entering booming bass, only a few small squeaks of higher register worming their way through a central middle register grind while a haunting repetitive throbbing sits at the back of the piece. The final third or so of “Evil Sleep” tears some holes in the previously enveloping approach, bringing some of the low frequencies out and prompting a haunting higher refrain to faintly echo around, further grain and gristle emerging from the thinner texture which has been sandpapered away over the preceding 15 minutes. It’s not the type of noise I visit unless prompted to, but “Evil Sleep” is clear in its vision, intent in its execution, and faultless for achieving its want.

The strangely-titled “Do You Still Party” is the subversive winner for me, less disjunct than “Twisted Limbs Washed” but without the wall-ish stasis which cramps Necroecclesia, and best expressing the solemnity of Death Dedication within its chosen swampish noise output while bringing some movement and uncertainty to the composition. The entirety of 'Experiment To Destruct' is deserving of several listens without necessarily being a release which will protrude from my collection in months’ time; like much of the ’00s product it emulates ‘Experiment To Destruct’ is a turgidly enjoyable listen should I chance upon it, but also unlikely to trigger a reminiscence and want to listen when in the drawer and out of sight. Short props to the suitably obscure collage art, which wraps the disc in layers of the unknown and adds a hallucinatory layer of distraction to the sound within.

Compest ‘Leitern Und Pfade’ C-54 & Internal Fusion ‘Those Who Are Straight’ CDR (Oxidation)

Oxidation started as an online reissue archive of endangered industrial artefacts previously found on  CDR, but has expanded to itself release physical media drawing on label head Marc Benner’s broad experimental tastes. Compest and Internal Fusion are artists who both come from a backstory of earlier material – but that history is at the fringes of the noise/experimental underground which Oxidation more frequently taps, putting these two releases perhaps at the fringe of the label’s work.
Compest is the work of Martin Steinebach, the cross-contaminated result of previously more distinct projects across orchestral and ritual/tribal synthetic atmospheres, rhythmic industrial, and ambient abstraction. The title translates as ‘Ladders And Paths’, a hint at the inter-connections which bind the cassette even as it draws from across Martin’s stylistic interests.

‘Leitern Und Pfade’ in part builds on synthesizer atmospherics which trace an industrial lineage to N. or Hive Mind in their chill. “Leiter” and “Sprossen” utilise slow-moving low synth drones dusted with higher semi-melodics: the former track folds in an unexpected snare pattern and sparse found refuse percussion; the latter adding orchestral overlays in its second half, as its repetitious drift starts to spark a flickering tremble to the piece. Lengthy “Pfad”, and “Oben” after it, maintain a similar link but with a serious kosmische bent and without drawing in disparate sound elements – although “Oben” bolsters its triumphant melodic refrain with some subtle synth voices. These evenly spread performances are more dramatic astral aspirations which would be entirely at home cast across a Carl Sagan documentary.

The remaining tracks further the kosmische leanings while leaving any underground genre sympathies behind.  “Aufstieg” is a meandering synthesizer solo, while “Umweg” and “Abseits” are both constructed pieces, utilising bass guitar, synth-derived sitar, faux-orchestral swells and rhythmic elements which wear their influences proudly, and are unashamedly soundtrack-y in their evocation. Noisier elements are present but difficult to find: the tracks add a fine distorted dust to portions but which is easily lost, and not really the point – ‘Leitern Und Pfade’ has no intentions of finding a home in the post-industrial lexicon.

French project Internal Fusion’s CDR contains only a single track but the piece plays out in movements. Its opening torrent of voice fragments is tightly constructed, with digital stutters, dead-end loops and shifting sound placement setting an intentionally disorienting introduction which the disc then plays on through its duration. The other sonic elements are just as far-reaching, familiarly intangible ambient electronics finding space as do a rush of nostalgic synth melodicism, intense sustained tones, and swarms of harder noise expansion which give the piece a needed harder edge.

Rhythmic constructs are a constant presence – at first intentionally fractured and incomplete, taken by ambient drift or buried in uproar – but over the middle third of the disc ‘Those Who Are Straight’ settles comfortably into a fulsome lilting gait and then winds back into an uneasy off-kilter percussion made from metal and other found sound, as layers of voice again build around the piece.

The blatant beat of the middle, and the piece’s penchant for slipping into rhythm even when not overt (both the beginning and end find uncertain rhythmic components slip into place around the intentionally disjointed vocal manipulations), will keep many at bay. But with some forgiveness ‘Those Who Are Straight’ exhibits a healthy experimentalism – particularly in its extended voice manipulation and at times quite scrappy noise elements – which may attract those usually drawn to more underground pursuits.

Oxidation’s packaging – attaching the disc to a square of moss (for those able to receive plant matter in the mail) may do likewise, imbuing the disc with a curiosity which matches its more unconventional moments. The Compest cassette is similarly supposed to be beeded in a layer of dirt, although international purchasers can order either release without the organic matter, attaching their own localised mire to avoid attracting the ire of border biosecurity guards. Oxidation’s physical releases have overwhelmingly entered the world as bulky, heavy, and/or messy editions which can make overseas ordering difficult – but Mark has been careful to offer modified versions which can find their way internationally.

https://oxidation.bandcamp.com/album/leitern-und-pfade

https://oxidation.bandcamp.com/album/those-who-are-straight

Andrew Grant – ‘Scrap’ C-30 + booklet (Foul Prey)

At least since The New Blockaders’ ‘Changez Les Blockeurs’ scrap metal has been a pervasive instrument of choice in the noise/industrial idiom, a bulwark of anti-musicality which is found liberally littered through the genre. For a rare release abandoning his The Vomit Arsonist guise, Andrew Grant has compiled ‘Scrap’ from just that, a set of unnamed dark concoctions which flail, caress, abuse and distress pieces of junk metal.

Channelled through a small bank of effects – predominantly the capacity to swamp sounds in heavy reverb – and with the acoustic sounds carefully realised, ‘Scrap’ isn’t the refuse orgy of The New Blockaders or tetanus-laced infestation of Mania (although both I expect carry influence) but is more compositionally realised, each piece approaching its sound source in a different fashion.

Raw metal fumbling opens ‘Scrap’’s first piece, heavily handled in the beginning before shifting to slower grappling which makes full use of the thick reverb coating the piece for probably the simplest realisation of the concept to open. What follows is a swampy rumble of reverberated cast-offs coursing almost subterranean, its intangible reflections giving a sharper focus to the scrap metal rustling on top, before a new piece emerges to explore angular creaks and groans through a slow delay, a dynamic counterpoint to the slow simmer of the previous piece.

The second side finds further points of expression within the same techniques, its opening piece comprised triggered howls of heavily effected clatter, the reverb seeming to feed on itself to urge a hostile swarm of sound from each singular blow, high register clanging lurking in the background as the piece angrily stirs itself up before retreating into a set of slower scrapes and bumps which leech reverb and puddle it on the floor.  The following piece dips jagged cuts of metal in tape distortion for a raw sound not far from the Rupenus brothers, but evokes a dark ambient halo with thinner flickers of high-end shimmer while a low frequency rumble lurks half-submerged, moving into a final piece of gristly acoustic recordings, largely mid-frequency clamour finding points of squealing resistance as rusted objects are dragged from points of resistance.

‘Scrap’’s accompanying artwork booklet takes an almost literal approach to the title, pages of expansive white spoiled with torn scraps of collage art largely profiling the sites of decay, abandonment and danger which provide source material for ‘Scrap’’s audio recordings. It’s a welcome addition which manages to avoid the obviousness of its aesthetic in the way its torn fragments are framed on much larger pages, giving the presentation more of a gallery feel above the raw crudities of its content.

What draws me repeatedly to ‘Scrap’ is the variation to its theme, a variety of tonal and dynamic sounds lifted from the scrap metal – then shaped using Andy’s more familiar death industrial stylings. Even when bashing misshapen chunks of iron and dented oil barrels, Andy’s deft compositional hand avoids any seriously sharp edges, bloated noise, or thudding industrial commotion – leaving the cold of the steel, inhalation of its rust, and the dark shapes of its discarding.

http://foulprey.bandcamp.com/album/scrap

V/A ‘Materialism’ 2xC-20 (Skeleton Dust)

 

‘Materialism’ marks the sixth of Skeleton Dust’s ‘Contemporary Harsh Noise’ double cassette sets, a chance for the known and the unknown, the well-played and the freshly energised, to profile the vanguard of the contemporary noise scene. It’s a well curated and diverse cross-section of the current state of play, and all volumes well worth tracking down.

First on ‘Materialism’, Legless thresh several ideas through “Nature’s Cruel Amusements” to find that the project is best when laying down thick slabs of distorted roar, the piece blanketed in a rough production with low and high frequencies rounded off but still finding a breadth of sound by multi-tracking flows of full momentum distortion.

“Nature’s Cruel Amusements” trawls through a fairly scrappy first few minutes, a shallow frequency range semi-submerging warbling feedback, what may be wafts of turntable unravelling, sexed up moaning, and primitive blocks of distortion. A series of crude tape drop-outs are then used to propel the piece out of its initial explorations, a more rugged abrasiveness encasing the piece as it varies between stretches of viscous distortion cut, and stereo-split tangents which revisit the untidy beginnings of the piece but more nakedly, spurts of disjointed wrangling which lay bare Legless’  workings before retreating back into the comfort of its simplest pleasures.

Phocomelus reminds of The Haters’ recent recordings, layered but discrete textures built from dying electronics and the dust and disintegration of discarded media. The outcome is quite static, “Unopened”’s timbres set up to cycle and stagnate: a sinkhole of squirming, distressed, and unhappy components which consolidate into an intentionally untidy muddle of noise. The track is not as head-down abrasive as previous Phocomelus tracks which have strayed into The Rita territory, instead finding a grim enjoyment in the discomfort of its inputs as mired in the surprisingly confronting low-end growl which fills the spaces of the piece.

K.M. Toepfer is the lo-fi miscellany of the set, “Fictitious Growth” built from microcassette player feedback, mixed feedback and a handful of pedals, its flurries of internal feedback given a bulked-up coarseness by the steroidal qualities of the effects bank. The weedy slipperiness of the source instruments still clings to the piece even at its hardest, motors unspooling, buttons clunking and feedback chafing throughout the flailing of the piece, recalling the fidelity and blitheness of Stabat Mors and Licht-Ung: a chase of the moment splattered on tape and offered up unapologetically. It’s not the high point of the set, and lacks the vision of Wolf Creek or the comparative harshness of Legless, but in extolling the joys of noise-making Karl is as proficient as any of the others.

Wolf Creek close ‘Materialism’ with a heavy dose of fast-and-furious harshness recalling the heady days when Merzbow and Pain Jerk were competing for who could frequency saturate a length of tape the most. A barrage of searing distortion blasts most of the piece while snappish filter sweeps, low-end oscillations and barbs of feedback make vague shapes behind the screen of mid-range scald, with some brief drop-out moments of metallic clatter, weightier low-end shudder, and engine motor grind passing quickly in favour of returning to the piece’s central vortex scream. After the first three sides investigating qualities other than out-and-out ferocity, ending on Wolf Creek’s stun gun confrontation is the needed uptick with which to close.

True to the series’ form ‘Materialism’ manages to find variance in even the most confined of genre pinpoints, each performer bringing strong material to its chosen take on modern harsh noise – and the confined tracks lengths guaranteeing no chance of inattention or dilution.

https://www.skeletondustrecords.com

Wagner Ödegård ‘Spöstugan’ C-40 & ‘Ursumar’ C-34 (Altare Productions)

Anyone working backwards from Wagner Ödegård’s recent LPs on Klaxon will experience a quick mis-step into a shadowy world of dark sound experimentation which, while sonically at odds with the bonfires of raging black metal found on the recent LPs, informs and develops the core misanthropic qualities found on those recent recordings (as well as Wagner’s work in projects such as Wulkanaz and Tomhet). ‘Usumar’ and ‘Spöstugan’ seem to complete a set of four previous cassettes and two LPs (all simultaneously collected and reissued as a cassette boxset on Altare) which have explored environmental, meditative, abrasive and atmospheric inclinations of black metal through field recordings, ambient electronics, and primitive industrial constructs.

The more familiar deconstruct, ‘Ursumar’ was released in abridged form on Bandcamp in 2017 and only released fully as part of the ‘Sju Väglösa Mil’ compilation CDs in 2019, now a standalone release. The cassette holds two sides predominantly of drawn out church organ/synth melodies, an incremental development to the black metal introductions which spawned projects such as Wongraven and the first Lord Wind album before burgeoning into a surprisingly self-sufficient subgenre – dovetailing with the industrial underground most notably thanks to the amazing work of Roger Karmanik and Cold Meat Industry.

‘Ursumar’ will probably attract more than a few ‘dungeon synth’ descriptors but that’s inaccurate not least because of its context among Wagner Ödegård’s other work, the cassette in some ways the product of an almost deliberate search for structural purpose – albeit one then subjected to far more experimental whims than found in most dungeons. “Nordsolen” and “Jordmånen” are both fractured by gnawed tape errors, haunted by spoken word fragments (particularly through opener “Nordsolen”’s beginnings), and coated in a thick layer of tape hiss, experimental techniques sabotaging the otherwise simple solemnity at the heart of the pieces.

The tonal work itself is simple but without any drudgery, slow chordal shifts and circular melodies eased out of a pipe organ and then abraded by the analogue granularity which cakes the pieces. The often abrupt cuts between portions are hewn by cassette player editing and ultimately destroy the attempt at a more familiar construct. “Jordmånen” in particular seems to be opening up into a state of near sermonising, only to drop out crushingly with an almost audible cassette deck head thud.

‘Spöstugan’ was previously unreleased until the ‘Sju Väglösa Mil’ compilation CDs and again gains its first standalone release thanks to Altare. The work finds Wagner Ödegård entirely removed from melodic or instrumental inputs, instead capturing the devoid centre of the project in perfect abstract minimalism.

If the ‘Skugg-Hasse’ and ‘Nidvintern’ LPs used field recordings to seemingly reflect a natural environment, ‘Spöstugan’’s first side is the sound of a returnto urban isolation, the piece dominated by a slow-paced rumble which is  seemingly lifted from midnight traffic murmur through an open window, hazed by snippets of muffled voice, snatches of near music and other indecipherables – and twisted into post-industrial form through an unsubtle low-end boost. The second side is similarly cloaked in intangibly ambient noise, although seemingly more directly composer-created: a subtle layer of machine clamour lapses as motors discernibly lapse or die, and the piece thickens as those same mechanics cycle into more focused momentum which tends to leave some of the foggy frequency behind.

Neither piece relies entirely on its murky minimalism; the second side is quite forceful in its opening, unleashing a strafing low synth tone and piling on strands of what may be whispered vocals which have been reversed and immersed in reverb. The first side manages through its middle section to metamorphosise into a semi-regular throb and constrict further to an almost singular tonal pulse and later ringing mid-toned repetition, both clever in their disintegrative execution – the first side shifting from captured to created sound while discreetly folding in on itself, downsizing from an expansive sonority to a confined tonality, is particularly well realised.

Like Wagner Ödegård’s earlier recordings, ‘Spöstugan’ and ‘Ursumar’ find their own obscured pocket somewhere between black metal sensibilities and the experimental underground, drawing from each without properly fitting into either. These works’ ‘previously unreleased’ status is no cause for avoidance; both are crucial parts of Wagner Ödegård’s curious and enthralling discography. ‘Spöstugan’ adds to that considerably by including a 32 page A5 zine of drawings and poetry: a mixture of arcane drawings, hand-inked esotericism and torture ruminations which gives insight into the project’s impetus while adding further layers of mystery and difficulty.

http://www.altare.pt

Golden Vomit ‘Beyond All Reason’ C-60 (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon)

 

Campbell Kneale and Ilkka Vekka are each responsible for some of the most colourful experimental music I’ve enjoyed; Birchville Cat Motel’s ‘Beautiful Speck Triumph’ still stands as a fucking triumph of uplifting, epiphanic drone, and particularly early Haare material such as ‘The Temple’ is rampant with brushstrokes and shades, a pulsing and vivid psychedelia drenching the material and wringing lysergic acid diethylamide from its harsher industrial scenes.

In resurrecting an overlooked Golden Vomit recording for Campbell’s Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, however, Ilkka explores the shadowed side of drone enjoyment: a grainy electronics haze which has snuffed out aspirations of musicality and replaced those with a defiant minimalism which reduces its sound to a vacant expression and monochrome palette.

“Part 1” is a slow but constant billowing of featureless smog, unseen chimneys pumping out thick airborne particles which line the lungs and burn the eyes. Machinery thud, muffled vehicular movement and a slowed warning siren are all hinted at from underneath the thick cloud of suffocating grey without ever overcoming it, until a wash of ghosting feedback joins the piece towards it conclusion – without giving any urgency or sharpness to the piece, and instead seeming to deepen the distance of the scene without yielding any more shape or detail.

“Part 2” has none of the churn of the first side, its particles suspended in mid-air and moving softly as pockets of soft current hit them, the oppressive surround of the first part reduced to a laconic drift on the second. The outcome is as dispassionate and music-less as fragments of an intonarumori cast into the eye of a hurricane, again relying on intangible mid-range electronics haze with an absolute minimum of ephemeral sounds – and not even the hint of progress which the first part was willing to share.

Whatever life affirmations artist or label may have acknowledged in the past, ‘Beyond All Reason’ is having none of it. Even if “Part 1” acknowledges the ugly industrial footprint of human existence, “Part 2” seems entirely removed from that presence. While artistically removed, ‘Beyond All Reason’ has more in common with the rejection of development and form found in acts like Vomir, than the slow-motion but overt gestures of Ilkka’s flagship project. The reward as listener is in losing time and reality to sound: in not requiring anything more than to succumb to a numbing nothingness.

https://celebratepsiphenomenon.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-all-reason

Terror Cell Unit 'Fear God/Hate Man' 3"CDR (Nefarious Activities) and The Cherry Point 'Buried Alive' 3"CDR (Chondritic Sound)

 

Terror Cell Unit is the duo of Mackenzie Chami (God Is War, Koufar, Bachir Gemayel, and many others) and Samuel Montero-Torres (Crawl Of Time), the project standing at the intersection of religious dogma and social breakdown to count the car crashes, releases exploring fanaticism and its impact on American modernism through strong visuals and even stronger power electronics constructs. The duo has typically worked a powerful austerity to drive its message home, but that hasn’t felt quite so direct as on ‘Fear God/Hate Man’ – the duo’s first release from 2014, now reissued on 3”CDR by Nefarious Activities after first emerging as a cassette from Crown Tapes.

The short disc’s cyclic simplicity is proximate and its caked-on dirt practically visible, both tracks driving a simple but powerful synth/distorted drum machine pulse, rumbling low-end making for a suffocating listen notwithstanding the bare bones inputs. “Matthew 27:24” drives a line which varies from heavy rhythmic march to vibrating murmur, with only the middle section showing any signs of further life as a few stray tones reach boiling point on top. After its lengthy sample prophesising the succumbing of America to the perils of anti-Christian modernisms, “I Point The Finger At You” consists of a simple melodic refrain, crisped with distortion and with a lower octave initially doubling the refrain – until assuming its own route for a sort of fucked up counterpoint which splinters the track to then truncate it.

Over both, burly vocals with a pleasing reminiscence of John Balistreri’s prime Slogun moments let loose, heaving in outrage and brutishly berating the track with syllables as blunt as knuckledusters. Mack Chami seems responsible for the outbursts, the harrowing effort familiar to those who have laid on the floor whimpering after playing a Koufar CD too loud: it’s an affronting capability which is up there with the best American power electronics bellowers, and a large part of what has made Koufar and Terror Cell Unit so prominent among the current crop of projects. While later releases have used the same elements with greater sophistry and detail, ‘Fear God/Hate Men’ doesn’t suffer for its brevity or simplicity; the disc says what it needs and moves on, leaving broader statements for later development.

The Cherry Point skipped the entire ‘10s, an amazing proclivity in the previous decade snuffed out with only a couple of delayed projects emerging through the intervening period. ‘Buried Alive’ has appeared at the tombyard gate unexpectedly, two fresh recordings realised in June 2020 and rushed to 3”CDR by Chondritic Sound.

The blood is still circulating because it’s as if nothing had happened at all, “Buried Alive I” opening in flashes of steel and geysers of the red stuff, a constant flow of circling mid-range distortion unable to drown out the cries of strangled feedback sobs and an unsettled, choppy texture which axes away just out of immediate focus. It’s a savage return to form, firmly evoking the overtly violent end of the project’s filmic inspirations and leaving little of its savagery off-screen.

“Buried Alive II” is immediately different, the layers more defined and the overall impact hollower and more unstable. Again that pent-up enthusiasm sounds in scenes of exuberant slashing, but with the responsible texture this time more isolated in its portrayal. Variances in energy leave gashes of textural space from which a crunchy lower register, glimmers of initially turmoiled high-end and plenty of overt gore spill, the piece eventually lulling into an exsanguinated stillness as the final few signs of life slowly slop from the piece’s now empty chest.

If “Buried Alive I” is the scene from the protagonist’s ears then “Buried Alive II” is from the victim’s, the initial fury tempered with an adrenalised numbness, reducing to fragments of sensation and ultimately to a vacating recognition which reduces as death closes in. Phil has found immediate traction for The Cherry Point’s long overdue return, the perfect representation of the project’s reawakening as soaked in horror movie mythos.

https://chondriticsound.bandcamp.com/album/buried-alive

Shredded Nerve ‘Longing To Be Free’ C-36 (Dead Gods)

‘Longing To Be Free’ marks something of a return to the careful repetitions I recall from Justin’s early work, yet progressed to be immersed in his shift to electronic sounds and exploring a suite of influences I’ve not heard emerge from Shredded Nerve yet. The layers of solemn synth melodies, supporting monotonal meditations, and carefully honed haunt are an intuitive but distant progression from last year’s ‘It Was Meant To Be’, evoking ‘70s synthesizer creations a la Tangerine Dream, with a strong nod to horror synth minimalism and a hint of the darkly pensive experimentation of Deathprod.

Melodic sensibilities come and go, opener “Between A Lie And The Truth” almost hummable in its slow tunefulness and experimental sensibilities found instead in the insistent texture created by a gentle tap drip being effected to bring the sound to a shimmering murmur. B side opener “Before And After (Time And Shadow)” also allows a melodic synth lead to guide the piece, with its simple repetition underpinned by hoarse lower register drone and reflective sympathetic harmonics which scatter like light hitting a prism. “You Never Existed” however strips back to portray lightweight sounds carried in the air like Klaus Schulze conjurations, synth plumes floating serenely as a low-end pulse and singes of solar wind fill out the Kosmische picture, for a track which is somehow both the potential link to Justin’s earlier recordings and the genesis for this breakout exploration.

After “Before And After (Time And Shadow)”  the remainder of the B side takes greater filmic inspiration, the title track adding iconic staccato chiming tones and a scatter of foley footfalls for a strong ‘80s horror film scene of nearing dread, which materialises when its lower drone eventually rubs raw to expose some nastier edges in a rare acknowledgment of Shredded Nerve’s earlier discography. That’s followed by closer “You Were Different”, which elongates the final scene of morning survival: an almost triumphant melodicism circling over warmer rays of layered tonal drone which flicker and disperse into more open chordal layers. The slow fade-out allows another quick reminder of Justin’s pedigree, as tape drop-out flutters impugn the embrace of the piece – but it’s a small show of avantgarde know how to end a cassette dedicated far more to the congenial end of electronic music.

In perhaps the same way that Emeralds came from the late ‘00s experimental underground but emphasised the genre’s Berlin School roots, ‘Longing To Be Free’ steps away from Shredded Nerve’s modern leanings to explore electronic music in a way that is just as genuine as ‘Final Vision’ or ‘Bleeding From The Head’. With very few moments of raw sound or noise impetus ‘Longing To Be Free’ is unlikely to be reflective of a long-term commitment if Shredded Nerve’s history is anything to go by, but as a sidestep this cassette is lovingly executed, utterly immersive, and a perfect late night replacement for when I want something beyond classics like ‘Cyborg’ or ‘Zeit’.

Lasse Marhaug ‘Four Seasons Only Winter’ CD (Sentimental)

The Norwegian winter found cruel reflection in Lasse Marhaug’s ‘White Inferno’ (a 1996 cassette released on Mother Savage Noise Production, latter reissued on CD by Narcolepsia/Old Captain) and again in 2007’s ‘The Great Silence’ CD (on Second Layer). ‘Four Seasons Only Winter’ finds a different focus in the deep snow, beautiful in its painting of Lasse’s remote surrounds but exuding the isolation of a long winter and social distancing unprovoked by a global pandemic.

Single drifting mid-range tones fall slowly through the first season undisturbed, the background a silent white and the trajectory barely moving even as the listener’s focus is drawn in, soft waves of ambience vaguely shaping the contours of the landscape and frequently getting lost in the monochromatic blurring of frosted land and snow-filled sky, and the shallow gradient between night and day.

As the CD moves on the basic canvas is the same, but by the second season the isolation intensifies and reality is compromised, blurred psychoses moving from peripheral vision to the centre, flashes of hallucinatory colour heightened by a low-end presence creeping in – surely the onset of hypothermia. It’s an active and almost vibrant piece contextually – but scary for being so, its vibrancy playing out as delusion rather than genuine hope or seasonal shift.

The final two seasons confirm that wintry despondency, the third hovering a cloud of frozen breath in the air as a cold low hum idles ominously, space closing in on the listener over the lengthy sunless concentration, only to be subsumed by the even longer and wonderfully immense fourth season, its polyphonic drone wrapping the piece in various shares of white while reflecting the rays of the sun finally crawled from the horizon. An inherently musical quality embraces the track in much the same way as Birchville Cat Motel did at Campbell’s best, a crescendo of ever-unfolding tone continuing to emerge from the track as inflections come and go, emphases and tones shift, and the tundra fades into the distance without disturbance.

‘Four Seasons Only Winter’ is one of three simultaneous releases by Sentimental, but the only one in an enduring edition – 200 copies, compared to editions of 20 and 40 respectively for the ‘My Body As A Cavern’ 2x12” and ‘No Authentic Sound Left’ reel tape. It’s also the most restrained and most thematically resolute of the three, unwavering in attention to its carefully realised  ambience, and small details – notably the meticulous low-end of the second and third seasons, and subtle tonal transpositions through the final season. This is faultless frozen ambient from a man who clearly knows.